I went to the Nasher Sculpture Center today. The museum started out as the personal collection of Raymond and Patsy Nasher. Raymond made his fortune building the NorthPark Center, which at the time it opened in Dallas in 1965 was the largest climate-controlled retail establishment in the world. The revenue from the mall funded their collecting and collect they did. Their collection soon was considered the finest personal collection of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world.

Many museums were interested in the collection. This led to the portions of the collection becoming traveling exhibits and being shown at the National Gallery of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Guggenheim Museum and many other museums around the world. The Dallas Museum of Art built a sculpture garden largely in the hopes of winning the works. None of them were successful. The Nashers wound up building their own museum, the Nasher Sculpture Center, next to the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Center has a two-floor building as well as a sculpture garden. Much of the building was taken up by a temporary exhibit called Return to Earth: Ceramic Sculptures of Fontana, Melotti, Miro, Noguchi and Picasso. There were quite a few interesting works in both the temporary exhibit and the portion of the permanent collection still on display.

Next I headed outside to the sculpture garden. Portions of the garden were being re-sodded. The grass died due to the excess light from a large mirrored building that was built a couple years ago that looms over the Center just to the north. The reflections also cause problems for the Center's building, as well. It was designed by Renzo Piano to be lit with indirect light. There are tubular openings in the ceiling that were designed to prevent direct sunlight from entering the building. Unfortunately, the ceiling was not designed to prevent reflections from the north from entering the building and the light from the reflections are strong enough to damage some artworks. Lawsuits have been going on since the building was built but, in the mean time, no action has been taken by anyone to solve the problem.

When I was done at the Nasher I went across the street to the Dallas Museum of Art. I had missed the Sculpture Garden due to rain yesterday so I went back to see it. It's not very big so when I was done there I wandered through their American Art section again until it was closing time.

I headed for The Mansion Restaurant at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek. I got there a bit over an hour before my reservation and a few minutes before they opened. I sat out on their patio for a while. It was a lovely evening to be sitting outside but when they opened I chose to eat inside instead.

I ordered their 7-course Tasting Menu with some vegetarian substitutions. There were a couple courses that were good and the rest were great. I also had a couple glasses of wine that were also good. I really enjoyed the restaurant.